Category: movie recommendation

ROSETTA (1999) Rosetta was the not the first film the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc) made but it was the first one I saw and, as such, it was my introduction to what I’ve come to understand as one of...

LAW OF DESIRE (1987) Pedro Almodovar has referred to 1987’s Law of Desire as a “key film” for him. Not only is it the first film brought to life under his own production company, it’s also his first explicitly and...

TRIXIE (2000) Perhaps this isn’t so much a movie recommendation as a small attempt to redeem the reputation of what I consider to be an unfairly maligned film. Alan Rudolph (a director everyone will someday realize has made consistently remarkable...

IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL (2004) It’s common to ask an artist – be they filmmaker, writer, musician, painter, whatever – what her or his influences are. They almost always have an answer at the ready too. That’s because...

THE SLAUGHTER RULE (2002) Ryan Gosling has disappointed me more often than not. Sure, he’s fantastic in Half Nelson but most of his other work, from Fracture to this year’s Drive, has left me a little cold. Perhaps that’s because...

FLIRTING (1991) John Duigan’s Flirting is a sequel, technically. That doesn’t mean you have to have seen its predecessor, The Year My Voice Broke, to enjoy it. The connection between the two is that Noah Taylor plays the same character,...

THE SWIMMER (1968) The Swimmer is an imperfect movie, but one that looms large in my memory, as it likely does for anyone who, like me, wandered into the film expecting a tepid 1960s literary adaptation and walked out chilled...

THE EVENT (2003) This recent documentary We Were Here (which I reviewed here) is one of the must-see films of the year. I’ve probably spent more time thinking about this account of San Francisco’s gay community during the first ten...

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (1993) This movie may be slightly better-known than some of the other stuff I pick for these Movie Recommendations. It’s known as the movie Stockard Channing got her Oscar nomination for. It’s known as the movie...

LONGTIME COMPANION (1989) Having recently seen the wonderful and heartbreaking documentary We Were Here put me in mind of the great film, Longtime Companion, directed by Norman Rene. While We Were Here is a non-fiction account of the first decade...